


Impossible

by roxyeisen



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 22:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxyeisen/pseuds/roxyeisen
Summary: The scene that could have led to Mulder and Scully's estrangement.*This past week, hearing Mulder's surprising response to Scully's regret that she had left, I started thinking about what it was that really made these two break up. Obviously, they love each other deeply, more and more as time goes on. So where is the disconnect? I hadn't really thought about it from Mulder's perspective before - how deeply he feels guilt over what has happened to her. And I'm sure it was a big part of what led to their separation.





	Impossible

If there was any doubt I was crazy before this, now I know for sure. I’m trying to get rid of the most important person in my life. After the things I said today, I’m pretty sure she’s upstairs packing her bags. I’m terrified . . . and relieved.

I’m not going to sit here and say living with Dana Scully has been a walk in the proverbial park. She comes by her red hair honestly. When you live with someone, you get to see them in all of their worst glory. Once she threw a book at my head. A hard-backed textbook, mind you. She hates how disorganized I am and how apathetic I am about picking up after myself. HATES it. And of course, being who I am, I’ve spent not a few nights on the couch for saying something insensitive or getting in the way of one of her bad moods.

Not that I mind the couch. But I do mind being separated from Scully, which is why I know I’m crazy, because today I am actively trying to kill our relationship.

I was a criminal profiler. I know about psychology. I know that I have a ton of unresolved guilt that is making me a horrible life partner. And I know all too well that the path I’m on – denying this guilt and refusing to discuss it – is going to end with her walking out that door. But knowing it doesn’t stop me.

“Why are you trying to sabotage us, Mulder?” she asks in frustration. Frequently. And I never answer the question, which makes her even more troubled. “Did I do something to make you hate me? Have you changed your mind about us being together?”

I don’t answer. I never give the love of my life an answer. And tears gather in her eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall. She sets her mouth in a firm line and walks away. I love how strong she tries to be. I love how she always bounces back. How her care for me only grows as awful as I am to her. What integrity she possesses. More than any person I’ve ever known. Her tenacious love never gives up.

Our biggest troubles started not long after we bought our house outside of D.C. After the “honeymoon” phase, when she started working full time at the hospital, she did everything she knew to get us on the same page. I bristled every time she asked me to clean up some mess I made or do the normal shared chores of owning a home together. I would purposely avoid the very tasks I knew she wanted me to do the most.

The worst was when we spent time with her family. She came home with her head full of their advice and concerns. Being conservative Catholic folk, they wanted us to get married. Her mother often shed tears over my lack of commitment to the relationship. Bill derided me time after time for refusing to make an honest woman out of her. And though she never brought it up directly, I knew it was coming between us. And I was glad for it.

In 2008, I got called back to the FBI for a case right out of the X-Files. It reminded me how much I’d missed it. Like I’d forgotten who I really was. It lit me on fire, and I quit the steady work I’d had of writing for an online academic journal. I jumped back into paranormal research. And I could truthfully say I _wanted_ it to come between us.

Scully put up with it for far longer than she should have. Even as she argued with me and stomped around and slammed doors, I know she was worried about me. She told me several times she thought I had a form of depression and offered to prescribe me meds for it. In my heart, I knew she was right, but I refused.

“Talk to me,” she said tonight, as I sat flopped on the couch with the remote in my hand.

“Why do you always want me to talk?” I hated the whiny sound of my own voice. When she was gone, I wouldn’t have to listen to myself speak anymore. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“How can you not have anything to say, Mulder?” She leaned against the kitchen table, her arms drawn across her chest. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in her face, but I looked at her anyway. She was beautiful. Her hair was pulled into a haphazard bun, standard style for a busy doctor, I guess. Her hair is long these days. It used to be short, long ago in a different time when we were partners who would die for each other as easily as we’d fight over who had to do the paperwork. I like it both ways. I can’t pick a favorite.

Her features that seemed chiseled from the very hand of Michelangelo are as exquisite as they have ever been, though twenty years have passed by since the first time I laid eyes on her. I look closer and see the lines of aging, but I only notice them when I go looking for them. To me, she is the same angel she has ever been. When I look at her, I see my heart. The entirety of it. All that I care about in this world resides in her person.

Wouldn’t I like to just get up and go to her? Put my arms around her and kiss her neck? Tell her how much I love her? Ask her to be my wife? I have no shortage of thoughts like this. What I don’t have is the confidence to ask something of her I don’t deserve. And that’s why I don’t.

“Why are you always trying to fight with me?” This is what I said tonight instead of _I love you. Marry me._

“Please just talk to me,” she pled, and my heart nearly broke at the anguish in her tone. _You deserve so much more than this,_ I thought.

I couldn’t stand to see her so sad, so I tried to think of something benign to talk about. I told her about the research I’ve been doing. How I think I’ve found new leads. How I think I understand why the invasion I was so sure was going to take over the world last year didn’t. I could see her eyes glazing over as I spoke, but I kept talking. She came to the couch and sat, leaning forward and folding her hands over her knees.

“Mulder,” she interrupted. I stopped talking. “I’m done with UFOs.”

“Then what do we even have to talk about?” I shrugged and went back to flipping channels.

“It’s all you ever talk about! I can’t stand hearing about something so inconsequential when we have so much between us that needs to be addressed. I never want to hear about aliens again. I’m tired of it! Tired of them and the very stranglehold they have on my existence.”

“Fine. I won’t talk at all.”

“You’re being a jerk.” Her words wouldn’t hurt if she had screamed them, but I had to listen hard to hear them.

“Scully –“

I didn’t know what I was going to say, but she held up a hand to stop me. “We have been living together in this house for ten years. Ten years, Mulder. And we still can’t bring ourselves to call each other by our first names. We’re never going to get out of that basement office, are we? Our relationship is never going to be more than a work partnership to you.”

“I never said that.” I never said it wasn’t, either, and we both know it too well.

She turned toward me. “Look at me, Fox.”

I didn’t want to. If she asked anything of me I’d give it to her. I’m so weak. I need to be stronger. I need to remember who it was that ruined Dana Scully’s promising young life. I’m nothing more than a rapist who took everything from her and then had the audacity to think I could have it all.

“Scully, listen to me. Hear me. I’m not taking the stupid meds. I don’t care if you grind them up and hide them in my food, I still won’t take them. I’ll never take them. Maybe I like being miserable. Maybe I like hiding away in this house. Maybe I don’t want the same things you want. The same life. Why don’t you just leave if you’re so unhappy?”

My heart might as well have torn in two at my own words. _Please don’t leave. I need you._

She was taken a back. “This is . . . impossible. I need to go. I can’t believe I haven’t left already.”

I’ve done it. Mine is the victory. I’ve convinced Scully to give up on me. Why does the thought of it fill me with despair even as I rejoice that it’s over?

She stood. Her chin jutted out as a self-protective defense. “You know what you’re doing.”

_I do know. I’m saving you. I’m giving you the courage to leave and find the life you should have had before it’s too late. Never look back, beloved Scully of mine. Never, ever look back._

She left abruptly, without another word. An hour later, her bags are packed. She wordlessly pushes open the door and takes them to the car. I follow her as far as the porch, watching her go, willing myself not to stop her.

“Goodbye, Mulder,” she says with a wounded sigh. I can’t bear the look on her face. Like she just lost her best friend in the world. Like she just lost the love of her life.

Fortunately, I know she can do much, much better. And it’s time she did.

I lift a hand as my only goodbye. And though it takes every bit of strength I possess, I turn around and walk back into the house.

I may never see her again. I will dream of her every night. I have memories I can cling to as I go forward in bitter solitude. At least I know what it was like to sleep next to her. To breathe in her smell. To make love to her. To sit on the couch and just be together. I have a million little memories to sustain me. I’m grateful for that. It’s far more than I deserved.

_Go. Go and be well. You don’t have to care about the impossible burden of me anymore._


End file.
